Doc Rivers sat down, exhaled and started his news conference late Tuesday night with these words: “Oh, man!”

Everyone knew exactly what he meant. A simple, yet perfect way to describe the previous four wild days that rocked the Clippers’ world.

Rivers breathed a collective sigh of relief not only for the Clippers but for the city of Los Angeles, the NBA, fans and people everywhere who were disgusted by owner Donald Sterling and his racist comments on a recording released by TMZ.

Somehow, someway, Rivers knew just how to guide the Clippers through a topsy-turvy 96 hours of scandal, racism, emotion and eventual justice.

And it’s just beginning.

“I think you got through them because you had to,” Rivers said in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. “You didn’t have a lot of choices. We were in the middle of it. You just had to deal with it. What I kept telling my players was, ‘You guys didn’t sign up for this, but we’re in it and we’ll deal with it the best we can.’

“Things went really fast for everyone. You go through it piece by piece. There’s no rulebook to do this. I’m proud of my guys and for the most part, we hung in there to have enough energy to win the game.”

Before the Clippers played Game 5 against the Golden State Warriors, NBA commissioner Adam Silver banned owner Sterling for life, levied a maximum $2.5 million fine and with a 75 percent vote of NBA owners, will force a sale of the team.

Disturbing Sterling revelations, past and present, were revealed by the hour. Players from the Clippers and Warriors considered boycotts, the Clippers tossed their uniforms to reveal jerseys turned inside out, fans considered protests and all the while Rivers calmed each storm.

So much so that the Clippers, bolstered by a crowd that wore black shirts and chanted “We Are One,” defeated the Warriors 113-103 on Tuesday. Rivers has the Clippers one win away from advancing to the Western Conference semifinals.

“Doc’s been really strong,” Clippers center DeAndre Jordan said. “With his past and his experience with us, I feel like that made us strong and closer. We can’t let that be a distraction anymore. It’s behind us. We have to be focused on the Warriors and closing out the series.”

Rivers has dealt with racism in one of the worst ways when his San Antonio home was burned to the ground in an arsonist act by a racist.

There was no guidebook for that, nor was Rivers handed instructions on how to deal with a racist owner being ousted during the playoffs. Or his wife, Shelly Sterling, calling him during the day Tuesday to ask if he would mind if she came to the game.

Rivers has become the face of the franchise, and his steady influence should be admired.

“I would say Doc Rivers has probably experienced discrimination himself in the league, and he’s learned to deal with these things with grace,” said Vickie Mays, UCLA professor of psychology and health policy and management. “He has been fantastic in thinking about the bigger picture, which is to take care of the team and to be fair and have a sense of the right thing to do.”

Mays is also the director of the BRITE Center, which focuses on health disparities and how discrimination impacts health. She’s written about the Trayvon Martin case, too.

She’s followed the Clippers situation with a watchful eye.

“(Rivers) has remembered that the actions he took would affect all of us in L.A., the team and the NBA,” Mays said. “… We’re very lucky we have him as coach. What we’ve clearly seen is it’s his person that’s resulting in the kinds of decisions he’s making.”

Rivers gave the players the day off Monday, figuring it would do them a world of good to spend time with their families.

He’s famous for his season’s motto of keeping clutter away.

Rivers signed on to be the Clippers coach in June, and he’d heard rumors about Sterling. The hiring process was long and drawn out and he said “a lot of it was because of that stuff.”

On Tuesday, instead of watching Silver’s live press conference, Rivers had the Clippers doing their usual gameday shootaround. He shielded players from speaking to reporters before games, even though it’s typical for them to be available, and instead he answered every last question about Sterling. The media throng was so great on Tuesday that a Clippers official stopped allowing reporters in, citing a fire hazard.

“One thing I will say, too, is how blessed and fortunate we are to have a guy like Doc Rivers leading us through this,” Clippers star guard Chris Paul said. “I couldn’t imagine having another coach who was there to communicate with us and to ask us how we were feeling and not just tell us, ‘we’re going to do this and we’re going to do that.’

“He actually listened to us throughout this entire thing. It was pretty special.”

How is a coach supposed to deal with an unprecedented event?

“I told my guys, ‘you have to embrace this. This is going to be with us. Let’s keep winning. It’s not going anywhere,’ ”Rivers said. “You have to embrace that this is part of this year’s playoffs for us. We don’t have the manuscript or rulebook to deal with for each issue that comes up.”

But they do have Rivers, and he’s unknowingly writing the rulebook for future use on racist, discriminatory owners being banned from the NBA during the playoffs.

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